TechNews on May 14th - The Helsinki City Government in Finland announced yesterday that they discovered a data breach in the education department's internal files on April 30th. It is said that the information of 80,000 students has been leaked and used for sale by hackers. The reason why the hackers succeeded was that the cybersecurity personnel did not patch the known vulnerabilities in the servers.
TechNews noted that the Helsinki City has already collaborated with external experts to release an initial investigation report, which revealed that the hackers have obtained a large amount of information including names, emails, ID numbers, addresses, sick leave records of students/employees in the Helsinki education system. They also gained complete access to the education department's servers, which means that the hackers could access and download all educational information in the city.
Although the Helsinki City did not disclose the full details of the security incident and technical information, it is known that the hackers mainly exploited a remote login vulnerability in the servers for the attack. The Helsinki City also stated that they have not found any evidence of hackers infiltrating other department networks besides the education system.